500
Opinion of the Court
insurance industry. To allay those fears, Congress moved quickly to restore the supremacy of the States in the realm of insurance regulation. It enacted the McCarran-Ferguson Act within a year of the decision in South-Eastern Underwriters.
The first section of the McCarran-Ferguson Act makes its mission very clear: "Congress hereby declares that the continued regulation and taxation by the several States of the business of insurance is in the public interest, and that silence on the part of the Congress shall not be construed to impose any barrier to the regulation or taxation of such business by the several States." 15 U. S. C. § 1011. Shortly after passage of the Act, the Court observed: "Obviously Congress' purpose was broadly to give support to the existing and future state systems for regulating and taxing the business of insurance." Prudential Ins. Co. v. Benjamin, 328 U. S. 408, 429 (1946). Congress achieved this purpose in two ways. The first "was by removing obstructions which might be thought to flow from [Congress'] own power, whether dormant or exercised, except as otherwise expressly provided in the Act itself or in future legislation." Id., at 429-430. The second "was by declaring expressly and affirmatively that continued state regulation and taxation of this business is in the public interest and that the business and all who engage in it 'shall be subject to' the laws of the several states in these respects." Id., at 430.
III
"[T]he starting point in a case involving construction of the McCarran-Ferguson Act, like the starting point in any case involving the meaning of a statute, is the language of the statute itself." Group Life & Health Ins. Co. v. Royal Drug Co., 440 U. S. 205, 210 (1979). Section 2(b) of the McCarran-Ferguson Act provides: "No Act of Congress shall be construed to invalidate, impair, or supersede any law enacted by any State for the purpose of regulating the business
Page: Index Previous 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007